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In 2014, PZ Wilmar announced a new oil palm business worth $650 million in Cross River State, which would aggressively expand Nigeria’s palm oil production. In July 2015, a year after the plan was announced, a report jointly released by Friends of the Earth US and Environmental Rights Action Nigeria alleged that Wilmar was not complying with Nigerian laws, and accused them of human rights violations, environmental destruction, fraud, and land grabbing. The multifaceted nature of the “Cross River State crisis” permits “close-ups” from different vantage points to analyze the economic, environmental, social, and governance implications of palm oil expansion from a corporate sustainability perspective.

The case was researched utilizing secondary data, all materials are readily available to the public. There is no disguise of any actual person or entity and no relationship between the authors and the organizations or individuals mentioned in the case.

The case is best used at graduate level. It is very well suited for a MBA-level sustainability, business and society, or corporate social responsibility, or business ethics courses.

The case is grounded on the stakeholder theory, yet offering a fresh perspective, leveraging on the uniqueness of the Nigerian context. The authors argue that, while the assessment of the stakeholder salience of environmental groups operating in Nigeria might be different vis-à-vis other countries with sounder institutional environments, the normative question on whether the company should address these claims persists. The authors also draw from the social movements literature and bring forth the idea that the characteristics of the Nigerian context may jeopardize the prospects of success of adversarial tactics such as the issuing of lawsuits and extensive media exposure, which have been deemed effective elsewhere.

This paper aims to examine the relative performance of multilateral development banks venture capital funds (MDBVCs) compared to that of government-sponsored venture capital funds (GVCs), assessing their impact on invested start-ups.

First, the authors survey the literature to understand the performance drivers of public programs designed to foster venture capital (VC). Second, the authors analyze the characteristics of multilateral development banks (MDBs) VC-related efforts. Third, based on their goals, structure, governance and management processes, the authors propose and test the hypothesis that MDBs initiatives outperform comparable public programs, overcoming the main limitations of the latter.

The authors find that start-ups funded by MDBVCs outperform GVC-funded start-ups in terms of access to subsequent financing and international expansion. Consistent with previous studies, the authors find that start-ups funded by private VCs show the highest levels of performance.

The paper features an unstudied actor – i.e. MDBVCs-, and an unstudied region – i.e., Latin America-, using a unique data set of 437 start-ups that received VC investments in 7 Latin American countries during the study period 2000–2018.

This article introduces readers to the Special Issue (SI, 34-1) of ARLA, edited (not exclusively) with the best papers of the Academy of Management's Specialized Conference, scheduled for April 2020 in Mexico City. The COVID-19 pandemic forced its cancellation, but the expert peer review and editorial work continued, to contribute to the emerging literature on Latin American Management and Sustainability.

Guest editors contributed their expertise based on required editorial processes and focused literature reviews on Management and Sustainability.

There are large management and sustainability challenges to Latin American practitioners and researchers, resulting in an increasingly urgent need to systematically document similarities and differences in the fields of Management and Sustainability. It is so because the region has been affected as few others before, during and after the pandemic. Thus, this issue summarizes the literature, presents eight new studies and offers suggestions for future research.

Management and sustainability in Latin America are wide subjects, with different dimensions and issues. This is a specific contribution that leaves much ground to be covered in the different subfields of the area, in research methodologies and conclusions.

An agenda for advancing the field of management and sustainability in Latin America, highlighted by the COVID-19 disruption; additionally, eight of the most advanced research in the field are presented, chosen from two tracks of a large number of contributions to a recent specialized conference organized by the Academy of Management.

Este artículo presenta el Número Especial (SI, 34-1) de ARLA, editado (no exclusivamente) con los mejores artículos de la Conferencia Especializada de la Academy of Management, programada para abril de 2020 en la Ciudad de México. La pandemia COVID-19 obligó a su cancelación, pero se continuó la revisión por pares expertos y el trabajo editorial, para contribuir a la literatura emergente sobre Gestión y Sostenibilidad en América Latina.

Los editores invitados contribuyeron con su experiencia con base en los procesos editoriales requeridos y revisiones de literatura enfocadas en Gestión y Sostenibilidad.

Existen grandes desafíos de gestión y sostenibilidad para los profesionales e investigadores de América Latina, lo que genera una necesidad cada vez más urgente de documentar sistemáticamente las similitudes y diferencias en los campos de la gestión y la sostenibilidad. Es así porque la región se ha visto afectada como pocas antes, durante y después de la pandemia. Por lo tanto, este número resume la literatura, presenta ocho nuevos estudios y ofrece sugerencias para futuras investigaciones.

La gestión y la sostenibilidad en América Latina son temas amplios, con diferentes dimensiones y temáticas. Se trata de un aporte específico que deja mucho terreno por recorrer en los distintos subcampos del área, en metodologías de investigación y conclusiones.

Una agenda para avanzar en el campo de la gestión y la sostenibilidad en América Latina, destacada por la disrupción del COVID-19. Además, se presentan ocho de las investigaciones más avanzadas en el campo, elegidas entre dos temas de un gran número de contribuciones a una reciente conferencia especializada organizada por la Academy of Management.

This study aims to expand the concept of business growth by incorporating sustainability demands, particularly in the context of the Anthropocene era. It explores the growth trajectories of social enterprises (SEs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), examining how SEs integrate social and environmental objectives into their growth process. Through a systematic literature review (SLR), this study compares these approaches with traditional SME growth paradigms, highlighting the need for a holistic understanding of business growth that addresses contemporary socioenvironmental challenges.

A qualitative SLR was conducted, using a structured search algorithm to identify and evaluate research on growth and scaling in SMEs and SEs. The search of the Web of Science database with specific growth-related keywords yielded 5,362 articles, which were narrowed to 194 after filtering by journal relevance. Content analysis, guided by an inductively developed codebook, examined growth definitions, operationalizations, and methodologies. This paper focused on key growth dimensions (economic, social and environmental) and identified whether growth was addressed as an outcome or process, along with its enablers and barriers.

While there are areas of intersection between the literatures, the findings reveal that traditional SME growth frameworks do not entirely align with SEs growth conception and management. Furthermore, SE’s growth barriers and facilitators, as well as growth trajectories more broadly, emerge as distinct from those of traditional SMEs. The results distill insights from SE growth paths that can be valuable for traditional SME managers, particularly in terms of managing stakeholders and the institutional environment. Social entrepreneurs commonly use strategies for reshaping business norms, influencing consumer culture and raising social issues awareness, leveraging the values of stakeholders to secure essential support.

As SMEs confront escalating pressure to align with the sustainable development agenda, the findings underscore the critical significance of drawing insights from the burgeoning SE growth literature. This suggests that traditional SME growth literature stands to gain invaluable insights from recent SE research, fostering a more nuanced comprehension of sustainability-centric SME growth trajectories.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the tax aggressiveness among family firms considering their different levels of family involvement. Based on the family influence on power, experience, and culture approach proposed by Astrachan et al. (2002), this study examines to what extent the heterogeneity among family firms generates distinctive (and unique resource) combinations of family involvement that explain different levels of tax aggressiveness.

A sample of 282 small and medium-sized family enterprises and a structural equation modeling approach have been used to study simultaneously the effects of family influence through the power, experience, and culture dimensions of tax aggressiveness in family firms.

The family influences the business’ tax aggressiveness in different ways. As such, the greater the family experience, by the incorporation of second and subsequent generations, the greater the tax aggressiveness; in contrast, greater family power in terms of firm ownership and management negatively affects tax aggressiveness. Additionally, greater alignment of the family and business culture does not exert a significant effect on tax behaviors of family firms.

Tax aggressiveness is a complex activity that should be managed from a global point of view in family firms. Managers should compensate for the negative influence of family governance on tax aggressiveness with the positive effect of the family generations in order to obtain proper and balanced tax management that contributes to the sustainability of family firms.

This study contributes to the understanding of tax behavior heterogeneities among family firms by going further than most research (usually based mainly on comparative ownership aspects between large, publicly quoted family and non-family firms), considering some other more representative factors of family small and medium-sized enterprises, where the influence of characteristics of family management, family generation, and family values can be the main determinants of the firm taxation policies.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This paper explored the business growth path for social enterprises in comparison to traditional businesses.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

In this chapter, we analyse the role of women in armed Basque nationalist and separatist terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) from a gender perspective. ETA women were essential agents in the armed conflict, but their image in the mass media and society has been very different from that of their male colleagues (Rodríguez Lara, 2017). Also, their role in the terrorist gang has described a sexually based functional specialisation. In addition, this chapter seeks to contribute to the area of feminist studies on women and political violence. Women's role in one of the most important armed nationalist groups in Europe, ETA, stands as a suitable case study to understand how the mass media (press, journalism), audiovisual content, and social representations of ETA have portrayed these women. The final conclusion of this chapter is that women were not portrayed in the same way as their male colleagues. Women of ETA were doubly penalised because they were women and because they were terrorists.

Computer simulations improve the knowledge of physical models and are widely used in teaching and research. Key aspects are to understand their solutions and to make interactive changes to the models, observing their effects in real-time. The drawback of creating interactive simulations of physical models is the high level of programming expertise required. The purpose of this study is to facilitate this task.

Java is the perfect language for this task; it yields high-quality graphics and is widely spread in the scientific community. Because many important physical models are described by means of partial differential equations (PDEs), the combination of Java with FreeFem++, a C++ PDE solver based on the finite element method, is considered.

In this study, a Java library is introduced to numerically solve PDE equations via a run-time connection with FreeFem++. The solution is encapsulated into Java objects that are ready to be used in different programming tasks. The library also includes new Java visualization elements for solutions and meshes in the context of the Open Source Physics project library. Together, the connection features and the visualization elements facilitate the creation of Java simulations by programming researchers. For those with less programming capabilities, this work has been included into Easy Java Simulations, a tool to further ease the creation of interactive simulations.

The present study approach allows simulating models given PDEs. The equations are solved either in local or in remote mode (e.g. by a network accessible to a high-performance computer) and visualized locally, providing a high degree of interactivity to the end user.